(( meatspace ))

“His primary focus was to drag us into a war that [Bill] Clinton didn’t want to fight.” Whitley Bruner, ex-CIA, on Ahmad Chalabi…

Oh, Clinton didn’t want to invade Iraq? [Are you sure? Can't you parse statement he made to make bush look better? -ed Probably, but I'm soooo darn snarky] NO WONDER Bush was so gung ho about it!

As reported by Jason Vest in the Village Voice (Nov 27, 2001): “According to intelligence and diplomatic sources, Powell&em;as well as George Tenet&em;was infuriated by a private intelligence endeavor arranged by Wolfowitz in September. Apparen tly obsessed with proving a convulted theory put forth by American Enterprise Institute adjunct fellow Laurie Mylroie that tied Usama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Wolfowitz, according to a veteran intelligence officer, dispatched former Director of Central Intelligence and cabalist James Woolsey to the United Kingdom, tasking him with gathering additional ‘evidence’ to make the case. Woolsey was also asked to maek contact with Iraqi exiles and others who might be able to beef up the case that hijacker Mohammed Atta was working with Iraqi intelligence to plan the September 11 attacks as well as the subsequent anthrax mailings.” It turned out there was only one Ramzi Yousef, he was not an Iraqi agent, and he had been in a U.S. jail for years.

– Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, Ch4 Terror Returns, pp 95.

Clarke says his outspokenness earned the particular enmity of Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. Clarke is scathing about Wolfowitz, whom he depicts as obsessed with proving a conspiracy theory propounded by Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who contends that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was behind the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz commissioned former CIA director Jim Woolsey to fly to England to retrieve fingerprints of WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, in order to show that Yousef was a “false double” inserted by Iraqi intelligence. The FBI objected to this wild-goose chase, but Wolfowitz insisted. As it turned out, the fingerprints disproved Mylroie’s theory?they matched those of the Ramzi Yousef sitting in a U.S. federal prison. (When Clarke tried to tell this story in a draft of his book, it was excised by White House lawyers in a prepublication review for classified information.)

Newsweek, The Insider, March 2004

Accuser: Washington Animal (link, second bullet point)

Verdict: Innocent

CNN reports

The State Department did strike Osama bin Laden’s name and picture from their annual threat assessment. However, they replaced him with more extensive coverage of al Qaeda, which had not been mentioned in prior years. This is a proper and reasonable change in focus; the network, after all, not just the man, was the real threat.

This entry will be a roundup of an ongoing series discussing common allegations, true and false, around the 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda, and other global war on terrorism related discussion points.

Cue video tape from the 2002 SOTU: bush: “weapons of mass destruction”

cue tape from fall 2003: bush: “weapons of mass destruction related programs”

cue tape from 2004 sotu: bush: “Weapons of mass destruction related program activities”

cue John Kerry:

“I’m John Kerry, and I approved this message because I’ve been in the senate for 30 years and even I don’t know what a weapons of mass destruction related program activity is.”

Vote Kerry